The Canterbury Tales, by Geoffrey Chaucer is an iconic work of British literature representative of the Middle Ages. In it, a group of travelers tells twenty-four different stories, which each reveal something about their storyteller and audience. Throughout the poem, these revelations provide commentary on the social class system in England of Chaucer’s time; Chaucer’s creativity in “The Pardoner’s Prologue and Tale” allows him to demonstrate several viewpoints of these interactions between the clergy and the commoners. Before examining these viewpoints, it is important to consider the historical context of the text; without it, the significance of Chaucer’s work cannot fully be grasped. Chaucer lived between approximately the years 1343 and …show more content…
In Chaucer’s day, the theoretical function of the Pardoner’s office was to collect money for the church to use toward charity (“Pardoner’s Prologue” 258). There were specific rules about how they were to obtain those funds, and they were granted authority under a pope to sell indulgences to parishioners. The Pardoner’s position was included in the realm of the first estate, and was supposed to help improve society as a whole by encouraging charitable giving (“Pardoner’s Prologue” 258).
Unfortunately, corruption quickly found its way into this clerical office. Pardoners, as human beings like everyone else, succumbed to avarice. They began to preach flowery sermons in order to appeal to the emotions of the common citizens and convince them to pay unnecessarily for extra favors or worthless relics, and collected the extra funds for their own motives. Chaucer used this pretext to comment on the first estate.
Interestingly enough, the travelers in The Canterbury Tales call on the Pardoner to tell his tale because they want to hear a story with a moral. He